February 22, 2008
third in a series on labor and global warming after Bali
In a previous post, we described an upcoming conference on Green Jobs sponsored by the Blue-Green Alliance, a “strategic partnership” of the United Steelworkers union and the environmentalist Sierra Club. And we described how the emerging labor-environmentalist coalition could have a major impact on the current presidential debate. But global warming is caused, and has its effects, at every level from the personal and local to the global. So does the effort to combat global warming. In this post, we lay out some of the other opportunities for the emerging labor- environmentalist alliance to affect it.
Congress
Historically, Congress has acted as if energy policy were a pie being divvied out to the coal, oil, gas, electric, nuclear, auto, and other interests. Unions have often played this game, pushing for benefits for their employers’ industries. In this context, a broad vision for addressing global warming is essential for overriding the effects of competing special interests.
Which way organized labor goes will play an important role in shaping the future of global warming. According to the highly respected Congressional reporting of the Congressional Quarterly, lawmakers in Congress view support of the AFL-CIO as “essential” to passing any climate change bill. James Grumet of the nonpartisan National Commission on Energy Policy says, “If you don’t have organized labor, you can’t get something through” Congress.
Congressional action on global warming has been and is likely to remain an on-going scramble. Last year’s energy bill included higher-than-expected auto fuel efficiency standards, but cut funding for renewable energy and failed to establish a national renewable energy standard.
In December, the Senate Environment and Public Works committee, headed by Barbara Boxer, passed the Warner-Lieberman America’s Climate Security Act, which would put carbon caps on the U.S. economy – the first such bill ever to get through the committee. It is not yet clear whether the bill will go to the Senate floor this year, and it is doubtful that President Bush would sign such a bill if it passed.
While the bill represents a significant step forward, with global warming legislation the devil is in the details. The bill sets targets for long term reduction of greenhouse gasses that are lower than those proposed by international climate scientists, the UN, the international labor movement, or the Democratic presidential candidates. It exempts a significant portion of the economy from the caps. And it starts by giving corporations “pollute-for-free” allowances that have been estimated at a trillion dollars.
There is no doubt that major energy legislation will be on the agenda when a new Congress comes to office in 2009. Or that a unified labor-environmentalist alliance could play a major role in getting the devil out of the details.
Green jobs advocates in Congress tried unsuccessfully to include investment in climate protection in the recently passed economic stimulus package. But, given the current direction of the U.S. economy, job creation bills are likely to proliferate in the next Congress. They will provide an ideal opportunity to make the case for green jobs as the centerpiece of rebuilding America’s employment base.
State Policies
According to the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, “In the absence of federal policy, states and regions are taking the lead on developing policies that may provide models for future national efforts.” More than half of all states are taking some kind of action to combat greenhouse gasses.
Twenty-three states have joined multi-state coalitions in the Northeast, Midwest, and West to cap greenhouse gas emissions. Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Michigan, and Wisconsin, for example, agreed in November to cut emissions in each state by up to 80% by 2050.
Two Federal court decisions in the past year have said states have the authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions by vehicles. Last year California passed legislation establishing “tailpipe standards” for greenhouse gas emissions by automobiles. Bizarrely, the Bush administration’s EPA administrator refused to permit the standards to go into effect because they were higher than the national standards. California and 15 other states have sued the Bush administration over the decision, and many in Congress are moving to overturn it.
In a remarkable protest, presidents of the four union locals who form the “Coalition of EPA Labor Unions” representing thousands of EPA employees wrote to the EPA administrator who turned down the waiver:
As EPA union officers, we write to express our deep dismay and concern over the damage to EPA’s reputation following your December 19 decision to deny the California Waiver Request on vehicle greenhouse gas emissions (the California “tailpipe standards”). We represent thousands of EPA employees whose credibility and reputations rise and fall with the Agency’s.
We lament your decision–perceived by many as having been politically motivated and prompting Congressional investigations–has cast a negative light on our Agency. To some degree, your actions have placed our members in a negative light through guilt be association. This is especially troubling to the EPA staff we represent.
Labor-environmentalist alliances have enormous clout to affect this arena if they cooperate in a green jobs agenda. In Ohio, for example, the Blue-Green Alliance issued a report on “Ohio’s Road to Energy Independence.” It laid out the policy changes needed at state and Federal levels to provide Ohio firms 30,000 new “green jobs” from such sources as wind turbine and solar panel manufacture.
Local Initiatives
On the day in 2005 that the Kyoto Protocol went into effect, a number of U.S. mayors decided that, even though the U.S. government refused to sign the agreement, they would launch their own Climate Protection Agreement. Today it has more than 710 signatories. Participating cities agree to:
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Strive to meet or beat the Kyoto Protocol targets in their own communities, through actions ranging from anti-sprawl land-use policies to urban forest restoration projects to public information campaigns;
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Urge their state governments, and the federal government, to enact policies and programs to meet or beat the greenhouse gas emission reduction target suggested for the United States in the Kyoto Protocol — 7% reduction from 1990 levels by 2012; and
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Urge the U.S. Congress to pass the bipartisan greenhouse gas reduction legislation, which would establish a national emission trading system
The U.S. Conference of Mayors now maintains a Mayor Climate Protection Center. The briefing book for a recent meeting of the “Mayors Innovation Project” listed fifteen studies of municipal action to combat climate change. The local projects already under way range from transportation systems to weatherization to co-generation to renewable energy. Such efforts provide both a way for labor and environmental activists to work on global issues right where they live, and an opportunity to promote a “green jobs” agenda on the ground.
Climate change and climate justice are becoming huge issues for students through participation in movements like Step It Up and Energy Action. They provide a crucial opportunity for labor to rebuild its bridges to young people locally around a vital common concern.
Workplace
Most greenhouse gasses are produced by activities connected with work – whether it is the carbon going up the chimney of a power plant or out the tailpipe of a commuter’s car. Workers, therefore, will have a central role to play in monitoring and enforcing limits on greenhouse gas emission.
First steps in that direction have already started, often in conjunction with other objectives. Steelworkers in many plants have fought for limits on smokestack emissions that pollute local communities and release greenhouse gasses. Unions at Yale university, in conjunction with community groups, have bargained successfully for transportation programs that reduce traffic congestion and limit pollution. European and Canadian unions have gone far further in establishing themselves as “defenders of the global climate” in their own workplaces.
Many corporations are already initiating “climate-friendly” policies and programs — some genuine, some purely public relations. The labor movement and its environmental allies are ideally situated to hold them accountable. Workers can be the “eyes and ears” of the local and global community to uncover what corporations are really doing – to assist them when their efforts are genuine, expose them when they are not. In the long run, this is an arena in which the labor movement can play a unique role.
International
Organized labor is now officially recognized as a participant in the UN’s climate process; labor officially participated for the first time at the recent UN climate conference in Bali. Among the U.S. delegates were representatives of both national and local unions.
Unions in the rest of the world are often way ahead of U.S. unions in responding to climate change. Those who have had a chance to interact with them have found it a powerful and enlightening experience. Now the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), which represents most of the world’s unions, has established a global task force on the environment. According to Guy Ryder, General Secretary of the ITUC,
“The social and employment aspects of this enormous challenge must be at the centre of the global effort, to insure the massive public support which is necessary. We must also unlock the millions of green jobs which can and must be created. Inaction or inadequate action on climate change would have drastic consequences for employment and societies as well as for the very fabric of the planet.”
Labor rights and climate protection in both North and South are becoming progressively more interdependent. The task force provides American trade unionists an easy and natural way to participate in labor’s global process of responding to global warming.